REVIEW: Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

Moon Called by Patri­cia Briggs, is the first book in a new series. The nar­ra­tor is Mer­cedes Thomp­son aka Mercy. She’s a “walker” who has a broth­er­hood with the coyote and runs her own mechanic shop in the Tri-​Cities. Love the paw print tattoo, don’t you?

I thor­oughly enjoyed this urban fan­tasy by Patri­cia Briggs that is set in the Tri-​Cities. Excel­lent char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, plot, dia­logue and action. Former and cur­rent fans of Lau­rell K. Hamil­ton would get a kick out of this novel. Briggs has all kinds of super­nat­ural crea­tures that pop­u­late her world. They include the fae, grem­lins, trolls, vam­pires and a couple of sexy werewolves.

Mercy’s a mechanic by trade who calls the coyote her broth­ers since they share a his­tory. She was adopted and was raised with a were­wolf pack before strik­ing off on her own. Her next door neigh­bor is the sexy Adam Haupt­man, an Alpha of the were­wolf pack of the Tri-​Cities. In this world of Briggs, the fae have already been “outed” to the human world by their lead­ers simply because they were forced to come out due to unfor­tu­nate cir­cum­stances. Other super­nat­ural crea­tures fear that it is only a matter of time before their secrets are revealed to the world. It is this exter­nal con­flict that drives most of the story.

The story starts with Mercy asking Adam’s help with the new wolf, Mac, who comes look­ing for a job at her shop. Note: New wolves are dan­ger­ous since they have yet to gain con­trol of their wolf. Under an Alpha, new wolves learn how to con­trol their wolf and their killing instincts. Also, lone wolves are were­wolves who reject the pack and they are rare and are dis­cour­aged. Also, there is always an Alpha or dom­i­nant who watches over all the were­wolves in the US. The Mar­rock are the lead­ers of all the were­wolf packs in the US. The leader is Bran, a were­wolf sev­eral cen­turies old who con­trols all the were­wolves and makes sure they do not cause any harm to humans or reveal their exis­tence to humans. New wolves who sur­vive the Change but who can’t seem to con­trol their wolf and pose a threat to their family and society—they are eliminated.

Besides Bran, there’s his son Dr. Samuel Cor­nick, a dom­i­nant, sexy were­wolf and med­ical doctor who is also Mercy’s first love. They meet again after many years apart - albeit not in the best cir­cum­stances. They both still carry some bag­gage that you usu­ally iden­tify with broken rela­tion­ships and such. There’s still inter­est between the two but nei­ther one tries to act on it. Not yet anyway. Towards the end of the novel you start to see a tri­an­gle of sorts develop between Adam, Samuel and Mercy, which is to be explored later. I can’t wait.

Anyway, back to the plot: Adam is attacked one evening after pack busi­ness and is left nearly dead. Mercy takes him to Bran and they help him heal and figure out what the heck is going on. To Mercy’s dismay, Bran sends Samuel back to the Tri-​Cities with her and Adam. Both men are ter­ri­to­r­ial and give Mercy a hard time. As the plot pro­gresses, we try to figure out what hap­pened to Adam, who’s behind the attacks and such. We meet all kinds of para­nor­mal crea­tures along the way who help Mercy and the gang expose the culprit(s). The author does her share of throw­ing out red her­rings left and right but hey, it didn’t deter me too much. Also: I did not skim. Not one page. I admit the author took too much time explain­ing stuff at points where I wanted to get to the action. That’s the only com­plaint I had. The mys­tery wasn’t dif­fi­cult to figure out but it wasn’t easy either.

I plan to keep this book and I have already emailed this author to gush about this book and I am pray­ing hard that this is the start of a new series. I really like Brigg’s spin on the mon­sters she cre­ates in her world. We all know that these crea­tures don’t exist, but she man­ages to make you—the reader–believe that this world does exist. The plot was sound. Dia­logue excel­lent. This book is a keeper for the rea­sons stated above and also there are a few scenes that I’ve gone back to reread.

I also picked up and am read­ing Dragon Bones, the first book in the duol­ogy that Jen­niferL said she enjoyed just recently. I am enthralled. Thanks for the heads up on this one, J. I look for­ward to Ms. Briggs next install­ment in this new series.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Patri­cia Briggs, Moon Called Book Review, Fan­tasy Review

Tagged as: Mercedes Thompson series, Patricia Briggs, Urban Fantasy, Vampires, werewolves